Hugh Schofield

There's a statement from Macron himself and from the maritime authorities.

They said the ship was detained or stopped a long way out at sea, 750 kilometres off the coast of Brittany, so way out in the Atlantic.

It was going apparently from Murmansk, that's the Russian oil port in the Arctic region,

around the British Isles and going down to the coast of West Africa to Cameroon, where it seems this ship called the Tagor was officially registered.

Now, I mean, the background, we all know the accusation is that Russia operates this fleet of tankers, often old tankers, which it bought up when the sanctions started to hit.

And in order to evade sanctions, they operate under all sorts of flags of convenience sanctions.

and all sorts of elaborate kind of management devices.

But these ships, or many of these ships, are tracked.

The intelligence services of Britain, France, the U.S.

know of these ships.

They keep an eye on them.

And when necessary, like now, or when they deem it necessary, like now, they intervene.

So it's far from being the first of these actions.

The French have actually done three previous boardings.

And the idea is to, well, to reinforce the sanctions and to show that there is action being taken to stop this,

what they regard as illegitimate sanctions busting.

Well, I mean, if precedents are going to go by, the ship will be brought back to the coast.

There'll be more inspections.

The captain, who I think is a Russian man, will be asked to, well, we're told to attend some kind of judicial hearing, which will then probably set the date for some kind of trial down the line.

The man will then be allowed to go with the crew of the 23 people on board this ship.